Population indicators

Dear Mr. Maceda:

This refers to your column published on Aug. 11, 2012 entitled “Baptism of Fire.”

The column wrote, “Balisacan answered that the UN has set a 2.1% fertility rate for the country. Enrile then asked how the Philippines rated. Balisacan answered 1.98%. Checkmate, as Enrile said “In other words we are better than UN acceptable rate!”

It is unfortunate that the conclusions drawn from the discussion of these two figures led to some confusion as both indicators were correlated as you have pointed out in your article. We would like to clarify to the readers that population growth rate and fertility rate are two different concepts.

Population growth indicates how fast a population increases or decreases as a result of the interplay of births, deaths, and migration during a given period of time. Meanwhile, fertility rate, which is not expressed in percentage, pertains to “the number of births a woman would have, on average, at the end of her reproductive years” (2008 National Demographic and Health Survey [NDHS], p. 39). Therefore, a high fertility rate is one of the contributors to a higher population growth, the other factors being the mortality rate and migration.

The latest population growth of the Philippines stood at 1.90 percent, while the country’s fertility rate is 3.3 according to the 2008 NDHS. On the other hand, the 2.1 figure pertained in your article is actually what international demographers term as “replacement rate,” or the fertility rate wherein a woman, on average, is able to replace two parents. It is the rate at which, if held for a long time, the population stabilizes, i.e., population growth is zero.

I am sorry that I was not able to clarify this matter to your readers.